Samhain

The present chapter is a description of the festival of Samhain as celebrated by neo-pagans. It concentrates on the significance of the festival within neo-pagan worldview and documents some of the beliefs surrounding this time of year. It illustrates how contemporary pagans pick certain traditional cultural elements associated with the pre-modern folk celebration of Samhain and merge these together with references to the Celtic past to fashion a new festival of Samhain that is inimitably part of neo-pagan culture.

The aim of the paper is to inform the reader to the semantic shift which moved Samain from the start of summer to the start of winter. Additionally offer an explaination to when the semantic shift occured and how it happened. In doing so improve the comprehension of Gaelic mythology.

This essay presents a brief explanation of the Biblical teaching about Satan and the demons, a summary of the history of Halloween, modern manifestations of Satanic and demonic involvement in Halloween, and Christian responses to counter the growing influence of Satan and the demons, especially at Halloween.  Reasons are identified for the need to take the presence of evil at Halloween very seriously, yet at the same time, because Jesus Christ has conquered the world and is Lord over all, providing assurance of peace that only he can give.

Samhain, 1st of November, was the major festival which marked the opening of winter in early medieval Ireland; it is sometimes spelt Samain or Samuin, although the pronunciation was the same. In Tochmarc Emire it is the first of four quarter days mentioned by the heroine Emer; 'Samhain, when the summer goes to its rest'. To the writer of this text, probably working in the tenth century, it was therefore the opposite to the time of Beltane, being the period at which the livestock had been gathered in from the summer pastures and the cold and confined season was setting in for human and farm animal.

I-SAMHAIN: EL INICIO DE LA ESTACIÓN OSCURA Halloween, o Noche de Brujas, es una "fiesta" que linda entre una práctica que sobrevivió caprichosamente a través de los siglos mutando y fusionándose en nuestras sociedades, a una expresión materialista de la sociedad de consumo. Materializaciones del reino del Anticristo.